"Hey Arnold! The Movie" may be one of the worst-looking animated features in recent years.
The program's characteristically flat and distinctly two-dimensional animation — which is somewhat endearing on the small screen — winds up looking blurry and indistinct when blown up for the big screen. However, that's only one minor hurdle to overcome; this awful comedy has many more serious problems.
For one thing, it's painfully unfunny and unfolds at a snail's pace, which will greatly test the patience of its intended audience. But that's what happens when you stretch a concept that might work in perhaps one 30-minute episode and stretch it out to feature length.
The greatly padded story line features lengthy (and rather unfunny) parodies of "Speed," "Men in Black," "Mission: Impossible" and other previous summer blockbusters — a desperation move, to be sure, and one that seems to indicate even the filmmakers didn't think the material was working.
The story features characters from the popular Nickelodeon cable-network program, which centers on Arnold (voiced by Spencer Klein), a youngster with a head shaped roughly like a football. An evil developer, Mr. Scheck (Paul Sorvino), wants to tear down Arnold's neighborhood and replace it with a mall. For the youngster, that means his grandparents would have to sell their boarding house and possibly go into a retirement home.
Needless to say, he's determined to fight the project. So he and best friend Gerald (Jamil Walker Smith) devise a series of schemes to stop it, including carefully staged media events, as well as searching for a document that would prove the neighborhood is a historic landmark.
In that regard, they find help from a most unexpected source: "Deep Voice," an insider who's actually Arnold's pig-tailed arch-nemesis Helga (Francesca Marie Smith), who secretly has a crush on our hero. What few laughs the film has come from that character and her emotional predicament. Otherwise, the movie is hopelessly bland.
Also, it wastes the talents of such performers as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli, and also consigns the series' best characters, Stinky and Sid, to very minor roles.
"Hey Arnold! The Movie" is rated PG for animated violence (a fistfight, slapstick and explosive mayhem) and a crude gag involving the bodily functions of a bird. Running time: 75 minutes.
E-MAIL: jeff@desnews.com